When I think about New Year’s Eve, I think about New York, the ball drop, Ryan Seacrest and of course New Year’s resolutions. For me, the day is always filled with a lot of anticipation for the new year and I always find myself wondering how I’m going to change and be even better than last year.
As the day progresses, a list of resolutions begins to run through my head: work out more, take more time for yourself, eat healthier. But when nightfall comes, all of those thoughts come to a halt.
Although my family and I don’t usually do too much during the day, we always make sure to watch all of the New Year’s Eve specials, specifically Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
After eating the last of the Christmas leftovers, we move over to the couch and begin a long night of waiting for the ball to drop. Cozied under mounds of blankets, we spend the night chit chatting about the different specials, laughing at the celebrities and recalling things they’ve done throughout the year.
As I grew older, staying up for the whole night became a huge struggle. No matter how hard I try, the night always involves me falling asleep before 12 a.m.
The last year I remember forcing myself to stay up until after midnight was when One Direction performed and announced their hiatus in 2015, and look where that got us.
But my mom always wakes me up to say a happy new year and gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Then, I pull together the last ounce of energy I have to trod upstairs and collapse onto my bed.
As the house fills with the aroma of the blueberry muffins my mom always makes on New Year’s Day, I regain consciousness, and the thoughts of where this new year could take me fill my head again.
With the New Year comes New Year’s resolutions, meaning millions of people around the world are coming up with ways to better themselves and become the best version of themselves in the New Year.
Bettering yourself and seeking to be the best version of yourself always sounds like a great idea, but with the nature around New Year’s and the pressure to fulfill your resolutions, starting the New Year can be very overwhelming.
Like many people, losing weight has been one of my New Year’s resolutions for years and one of the reasons it took me so long to begin seeing results from this goal is that I lacked patience.
I tried everything from horrible diets to excessive exercise and none of these beared long-term results because I used extreme measures to try and get results as quickly as possible. When I did see results they never lasted because I didn’t have self-control or the basic knowledge of how to lose weight safely and realistically.
I had to do some research to achieve my resolution in a safe and healthy way. The results took time and there were a lot of failures and setbacks within my journey because I’m human and that is what comes with being human – we make mistakes.
When New Year’s comes and the clock strikes 12, we don’t turn into a completely different person; we don’t live in a fairytale. Our lives aren’t supposed to be picture-perfect. We can’t magically turn into this new person just because a new calendar year has started.
This thought process around the New Year is the reason why so many people don’t fulfill the goals they have created for themselves. They set unrealistic and unattainable goals within such a short time frame, which typically only ensures failure.
Time and patience are key when trying to do anything well. These are commonly two things people fail to anticipate when going on their journey to better themselves.
Instant gratification is something that everyone grapples with, but with social media, the desire for instant gratification has increased at an exponential rate.
On social media, we see only the good of people’s lives. We don’t see the process of their journeys and all the struggles and pain that came with it, we only see the results.
So with the lack of transparency and rawness that’s fed to us on a daily basis, we feel as though we should get results instantly, as well. But like anything in life, it’s not that easy, anything you want takes work and patience.
For the start of 2023, instead of creating unrealistic goals to become a new person, we should be taking life day by day, striving to be better but also giving ourselves grace and room to make mistakes to create healthy patterns within our lives.
You can’t just wake up and change your mindset and change who you are as a person. Everything takes gradual effort, it should never be new year, new me it should be new year, same me, just a little better.